Former CIA Officer Mike Baker On Bad Intelligence And Putin
Here’s a snippet on the Russo-Ukrainian War from an interview Joe Rogan did with former CIA officer Mike Baker last week.
Some takeaways:
Putin has been “pretty damn consistent over the years.”
If you look at what he did in Chechnya, if you look at what he did helping Assad in Syria, if you look at what he did annexing Crimea, if you look at Georgia, Abkhazia, South Ossetia. Every step of the way he’s been following in his mind this stated desire, that he’s made very public over the years, to rebuild his sphere of influence.
We were too optimistic, thinking that he was thinking like we do in a rational process.
Intelligence on what Putin actually wants is hard because his inner circle keeps getting smaller and smaller.
Human intelligence is hard, and despite movies, blackmail or a honeytrap are rarely the most effective methods.
Putin was a KGB officer for 15 years, and he served in East Germany rather than the west. “He doesn’t really understand how we think.”
The collapse of communism 1989-1991 was a great opportunity for recruiting spies behind the iron curtain.
Putin thinks “You guys have disrespected me, fuck you all. I told you I want my spirit a sphere of influence, and I don’t care whether I have to break it.”
“He called the collapse of the Soviet Union the greatest tragedy of the 20th century, and he’s he’s serious about that, he means that.”
He’s cut loose some of his own inner circle over the past couple of weeks.
“Was he given bad intel? Or was he given intel and choose to ignore it?” Like many dictators, Putin has a “thermocline of truth” (though Baker doesn’t use that phrase) between him and any possible bad news.
“They were gonna get in there, maybe within 48 hours, they were going to have control of Kiev, they would be welcomed by the population in Ukraine, and they would be able to establish a puppet regime.”
One of my professors in grad school described the then Soviet Union, as “… a third-world nation with nukes.” Not much has changed since 1991, except I wonder how many of those nukes still work given Russian attitudes regarding maintenance and update.
Key point that Mr. Baker misses is that just living among the locals isn’t going to give you any insight into how they think. If the foreign service officer lives in a bubble the way the an awful lot of US foreign service types do, no matter how long they live in a country…? They’re never going to get to understand the locals.
I remember when the whole Bosnian mess was spooling up. We were running wargames out at the simulation center at Fort Lewis, and we had a bunch of mid-level “area experts” from the State Department show up. Few of them spoke fluent Serbo-Croat, and none of them really understood the nuances of the whole ethnic mess that was going on. I’d grown up around the Yugoslav expat community, and I hate to say it, but I had a better handle on why things were happening over there than the “experts” who’d been assigned to that country for decades, and who thought that history started with the end of WWII. I literally had to explain to a couple of them where the source was for all the Serbian hatred of Muslims. They were entirely ignorant of the entire history of Turkish domination of the Balkans, and thought that was “ancient history” that no longer applied. Which, I am here to tell you, ain’t the case.
“They were gonna get in there, maybe within 48 hours, they were going to have control of Kiev, they would be welcomed by the population in Ukraine, and they would be able to establish a puppet regime.”
seems to me that is the West projecting their hope on Putin … not Putins actual thought process … its an obvious strawman that the MSM holds up so they can say “See Putin is losing” …
I of course certainly hope he loses but making stuff up is just wishcasting …
This analysis is also supported by captured documents and the way the war unfolded. When Hostemel was retaken by Ukrainian forces, it does not appear that there was a plan B.
One of my professors in grad school described the then Soviet Union, as “… a third-world nation with nukes.” Not much has changed since 1991, except I wonder how many of those nukes still work given Russian attitudes regarding maintenance and update.
I made much the same point here.
Key point that Mr. Baker misses is that just living among the locals isn’t going to give you any insight into how they think. If the foreign service officer lives in a bubble the way the an awful lot of US foreign service types do, no matter how long they live in a country…? They’re never going to get to understand the locals.
I remember when the whole Bosnian mess was spooling up. We were running wargames out at the simulation center at Fort Lewis, and we had a bunch of mid-level “area experts” from the State Department show up. Few of them spoke fluent Serbo-Croat, and none of them really understood the nuances of the whole ethnic mess that was going on. I’d grown up around the Yugoslav expat community, and I hate to say it, but I had a better handle on why things were happening over there than the “experts” who’d been assigned to that country for decades, and who thought that history started with the end of WWII. I literally had to explain to a couple of them where the source was for all the Serbian hatred of Muslims. They were entirely ignorant of the entire history of Turkish domination of the Balkans, and thought that was “ancient history” that no longer applied. Which, I am here to tell you, ain’t the case.
“They were gonna get in there, maybe within 48 hours, they were going to have control of Kiev, they would be welcomed by the population in Ukraine, and they would be able to establish a puppet regime.”
seems to me that is the West projecting their hope on Putin … not Putins actual thought process … its an obvious strawman that the MSM holds up so they can say “See Putin is losing” …
I of course certainly hope he loses but making stuff up is just wishcasting …
This analysis is also supported by captured documents and the way the war unfolded. When Hostemel was retaken by Ukrainian forces, it does not appear that there was a plan B.
General Milley/Feb 6:
Kyiv could fall in 72 hours.
how much of Putin’s failure was the fault of ‘his’ intelligence sources?
we put a lot of work into convincing Putin it would be easy.
a lot of this is our fault.